As I already mentioned in my last post, my first figure review will be of a female figure, to make things easier for you :) Taking these photos I realized I should probably take lessons… and buy a tripod (couldn’t even remotely use my macro lens) and buy new lights… …. q_q but on the other hand, for a first-time review things turned out pretty nicely, so let’s start:

Cocona is an OC of Shunya Yamashita. I probably don’t have to explain to you who Shunya Yamashita is. I’m pretty sure he’s even more popular/well-known than Toni Taka, so I won’t bore you with a bio. Cocona was released by Movic back in late 2007 and was sculpted by Ishida Eiichi. Now, Movic is probably not the most amazing manufacturer in figure history. I’ve looked up their products and they do a lot of chibi figure stuff. The scales don’t look impressive at all, the only ones I did know of were 2 figures from Kara no Kyokai and that Saber Alter, for which I have no explanation whatsoever why she’s so awesome-looking and the other scales are not… Ishida Eiichi is probably not widely known either, judging from his other works (only a few LQ Ikki Tousen figures). He did another Yamashita figure though, namely Rosanna.

Let’s start with the box:

It’s pretty basic, but also very fitting. There’s a front window to look at the figure in the box together with a cute ribbon-design, the characters name with some flowers on it and the original artwork.

The back is pretty much the same, the ribbon-print, kinda resembling a gift wrapping, is continued all over the box and instead of Yamashita’s art we’ll get a picture of the figure, as well as all the info that’s usually printed on the back of a figure box (her original price being 5800yen, I can’t remember for how much I bought her…)

Now let’s take a closer look at the figure itself:

There she is! I absolutely adore her design. Armor, nice body, big-ass sword. What’s not to like? Well, I read a lot that most people complain about her face not being as ‘Yamashita’ as it should be. I can agree to that to some extent, but I think it depends mostly on the angle she’s looked at. At an angle like the one above she look’s perfectly fine and yamashita-like to me. The pose of the figure was perfectly transfered from the original.

Cocona is stated to be a 1/7 scale, which I think is pretty accurate. She’s significantly taller than my 1/8 figures (most of my figures are actually a 1/8). HobbySearch claims she’s about 25cm tall. I think that’s rather optimistic. Maybe that’s the case measuring her from base to sword, but 22-23cm (without the ahoge) is probably more accurate.

I really do like here color-scheme. I’m usually not the biggest fan of pinks, but this one is a darker, stronger pink, which really stands out with her blue hair, the whites and the shiny metal-finish of her armor and weapon. Her back is strongly arched and the cloth-thingy attached to her back brings in a dynamic touch to the overall static pose.

Rear-view is also nice to look at. You’ll get a glimpse of panty, unavoidable with that kind of skirt, there’s folds in the cloth and the armor around her torso is nicely sculpted. The cloth-thingy (I have no idea what to call that… what IS that?!) is attached to the back of her armor. You’ll have to assemble that taking her out of the box but it fits nicely, so no danger of that ever coming off. Her hair is darker but it does have the shading-style as in the original art.

You might have noticed by now: I did not use the base for the photo shoot. To be honest the base is nothing special. It’s huge, it’s ugly. Cocona stands perfectly fine without it. No danger of her toppling over at all. Now that we’ve seen her from all sides, let’s take an even closer look:

She’s sculpted with Yamashita proportions in mind. In which I mean that her overall anatomy is quite realistic. Yes, her jugs are probably a bit exaggerated. Is that a D-cup or an artistically pushed C-cup? I don’t know. What I DO know is that these boobies are actually made of a different material than the rest of the figure. I would have never realized if I hadn’t read it somewhere. They are of a slightly softer material, so you can squish them. Yes you heard right: You may squish those boobies. It’s really a weird design choice, because you have to squeeze them hard to even notice a difference. I was almost afraid of breaking this figure and how stupid would that be? How could you explain that to someone. “Why is that part broken?” “Oh that was my fault because I squeezed her boobies so hard, I broke one off.” …weeeeird…. anyways:

This wouldn’t be a figure review if I didn’t talk about its faults. My Cocona seems to have a weird flake of pvc stuck to the rim of her collar. Never realized that until I took the photos. She also has a few scratches here and there. You won’t notice all of this, though, if you don’t take a reaaaally close look. What you WILL notice, sadly enough, are seamlines:

SEAMLINES EVERYWHERE. On the strangest places possible. There’s seamlines on both sides of her body, on the thighs, on her arms, even on her fingers. They seem to split her in half. A little bit of sanding would have done the job, but somehow Movic completely missed out on doing that. It takes away a lot of good points on that figure, because they are just so visible. The other downturn is the paintjob. It’s not too accurate, if not to say sloppy.

Seamline on the other side of her body.. Her armor design is great, though! She’s got that nicely sculpted blade thing attached to her lower arm and the shininess of the armor adds a nice contrast to the matt-finish of the rest of the figure.

Seamline on her arm up to her fingers… She doesn’t have that blade on the other arm. I like to imagine that the blade on her right is to block enemy attacks, and she uses her left to swing that huge sword. Oddly enough, the paintjob of her white nail polish is spot on. No sloppy painting here. The sword is made to fit loosely into her left hand. The end of the sword is quite broad, so it will stay in that position just fine.

Leg and armor design are pretty. The boots have a bit of a heel, the armor shines nicely. Her stockings are sculpted in a way that they seem to squish her upper thighs.. mmm.. sexy

The pink ribbon on her right leg to hold her stocking in place adds a cute, feminine touch to the bulkiness of her armored boots. Those spikes on her heels must hurt.. ouch… What’s also “ouch” is – again – that horrible seamline from top to bottom.. The black of the boot-straps wasn’t applied with much care either.

Close-up of her skirt and ‘absolute zone’. They even managed to fit a belt on it. Her thumb is sculpted to fit inbetween her body and the skirt, which will lift up the backside of it. I really like how they sculpted her abdomen and no, I have no idea what the thing on her left thigh is supposed to be. Design, design, design. It looks good, so let’s not ponder about that too much.

So, I said her thumb fitting inbetween the skirt and body will lift up the backside of her skirt. And this is also where things turn weird. I guess Movic saw themselves confronted with some design problems here. She’s got those white cloth things on her hips and it seems like noone knew what that was supposed to be, or where to attach it to. So they directly sculpted it onto her body, which left them with the problem of her panties. Those got attached to the white hip-things, resulting in a tiny thong. Also, did I mention ‘seamlines’ yet? This is definitely the weirdest part of her design. It’s a bit of a problem with her thumb lifting this part up. You really have to push the backside of the skirt down and pray it will stay that way. If you succeeded in doing so, only parts of her butt and the panty-thong will be visible.

I really like the design of her sword. It’s bulky, it has some nice details and it adds a little bit of harshness in contrast to Cocona’s feminity. I can’t bring myself to imagine her fighting, though. This sword seems more like an accessory than something she would actually use to fight. Other girls will go for their favourite purse, Cocona drags around a giant sword. Fair enough…

Earlier we were talking about how some think her face is not ‘Yamashita’ enough. I think it’s exactly this angle that will make people have this oppinion. Yamashita’s girls have round, puffy faces and with this sculpt, Cocona got a thiner face. Also her lips look kinda weird and pointy from this angle. If they had sculpted her face rounder and added a bit more eyelashes, I think most people would have been more satisfied with her. The other thing that differs from the original art is that Yamashita uses a lot of blushing, both on the face as well as on the body of his characters. Cocona lacks both. There’s not really anything on her skin that would qualify as blush, or even as shading, which makes her appear a bit too flat. That hairstrand coming down from the flowers in her hair looks extremely bulky, too.

Then again, here she looks perfectly fine. As this is probably the angle you will display her in your showcase, or wherever you want to display her, you won’t notice the difference in face-sculpting too much.

Aaand last but not least, I will show you that stupid base compared to the figure itself and unintendedly compared to a very nosey 7-month old cat…

I’ve owned this figure for a long time now and I stopped thinking of the original art altogether. Even though I’ve said a lot of nasty things about her sculpt and paintjob, I still love this figure to pieces. It’s the only figure in my entire collection I bought solely out of design reasons. I normally do not do this.. ever. It’s somehow part of my personal figure collecting credo to only buy figures of characters I know and like (of anime I’ve watched or manga I’ve read) but I just love Shunya Yamashita’s art (I wish someone would make some male figures. He draws amazing male OC’s…) and I completely fell in love with the design of her clothes, her armor and her sword. She does look amazing in-person. Close-up photos really don’t do her any justice or are altogether too flattering… There’s btw also a Wonfes Winter Ltd Version (released in 2009) which has her wear a completely different color-scheme, with twin-tails and exposed boobies, for anyone who still thinks she’s dressed in too much cloth.

Are there bootlegs of this?: No

Pros and Cons to wrap things up!

Pros

It’s a Shunya Yamashita figure, and that’s always a good thing

It’s a mostly accurate depiction of the original artwork

Nice metal-finish on armor and weapon

she stands sturdy w/o the fugly base

1/7 scale is a really nice size

Cons

Seamlines!!! @_@

Overall more sloppy than accurate paintjob

adjusting the back of her skirt might prove to be a pain in the ass

face might seem a bit off/non-yamashita-ish at certain angles

*breathes in deeply* oh wow, that’s it. That’s my first figure review! I hope you enjoyed it, I know some photos didn’t turn out as crisp as they should be and I feel like I’ve just written a freakin novel.

Constructive criticism is always welcome! Feel free to share your thoughts with me in the comments section. Are there parts you particularly enjoyed? Are there things I should leave out next time? Every bit will help me improve!